Dangerously exposed: the life and death of the resilient subject

Evans, Bradley; Reid, Julian

doi:10.1080/21693293.2013.770703

Cited by 206 publications

(161 citation statements)

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“…A similar statement could be made about the related concept of resilience, which critics note is being applied to a wide range of contexts with a wide range of intentions (eg, McEvoy et al, 2013). Such is the pervasive uptake of resilience-given its own inherent adaptability to different contexts, including neoliberalism (Evans andReid, 2013)-that Stumpp (2013) suggests it has now replaced sustainability as a core guiding concept in contemporary society, despite significant tensions between the individualistic subjectivity and adaptation rationale of dominant interpretations of resilience and the collective subjectivity and precaution rationale of sustainability (at least in its original formulation). The extent to which the enthusiastic uptake of the notions of adaptability and resilience reflect appropriate responses to novel environmental conditions, or their integration into notions of good entrepreneurial neoliberal subjects, is open to debate.…”

Section: Becoming Adaptablementioning

confidence: 99%

Opening and Closing the Future: Climate Change, Adaptation, and Scenario Planning

Rickards

Ison

Fünfgeld

et al. 2014

Environ Plann C Gov Policy

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Abstract. The gales of climate change blow the future open and closed. In response, we are having to learn to live with a renewed notion of limits and a novel level of uncertainty. One emerging governance response is a turn to scenario planning, which generates narratives about multiple futures refracted out from the present. Like climate change itself, scenario planning, and the broader field of futures studies it is part of, is historically and socially positioned, belying its application as a mere method or tool. This paper discusses the growing turn to scenario planning within government climate change adaptation initiatives in light of parallel shifts in governance (eg, interest in efficiency and wicked problems) and adaptation efforts (eg, framed as risk management or resilience) and their shared roots in the ambiguities of sustainable development. It provides an extended introduction to a theme issue that provides, overall, a nested discussion of the role of scenario planning by government for climate change adaptation, noting how governance, climate change adaptation, and scenario planning all fold together the motifs of openness and closedness. This paper engages with the emerging field of future geographies and critical interest in future orientations to highlight the way society's growing engagement on climate change adaptation exposes, critiques, replicates, and amplifies our existing orientations to the future and time and their politically contested and embedded character. It points to the way the motif of open futures can be both progressive and conservative, as political and economic interests seek to open up some futures while closing down others in the name of the ambivalent goals of adaptation and sustainable development.

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Section: Becoming Adaptablementioning

confidence: 99%

Opening and Closing the Future: Climate Change, Adaptation, and Scenario Planning

Rickards

Ison

Fünfgeld

et al. 2014

Environ Plann C Gov Policy

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“…The scientific community studying resilience at a meso level has yet to hold a critical discussion concerning the ethical implications of this type of starting point, such as the one offered by Evans and Reid (2013). It is interesting to note that when scholars of organizational resilience in high-risk systems make their assumptions that there is a link between system complexity, danger, and the need for resilient strategies, they typically do so by referencing Perrow (1984), who is highly skeptical toward the organizational ability to manage the dangers inherent in complex social-technical systems (Woods and Branlat 2011).…”

Section: The Need For Dangermentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the Macro and the Micro by Considering the Meso: Reflections on the Fractal Nature of Resilience

Bergström¹,

Dekker²

2014

E&S

100

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ABSTRACT. We pursued the following three interconnected points: (1) there are unexplored opportunities for resilience scholars from different disciplines to cross-inspire and inform, (2) a systems perspective may enhance understanding of human resilience in health and social settings, and (3) resilience is often considered to be fractal, i.e., a phenomenon with recognizable or recurring features at a variety of scales. Following a consideration of resilience from a systems perspective, we explain how resilience can, for analytic purposes, be constructed at four scales: micro, meso, macro, and cross-scale. Adding to the cross-scale perspective of the social-ecological field, we have suggested an analytical framework for resilience studies of the health field, which incorporates holism and complexity by embracing an ecological model of cognition, something supported by empirical studies of organizations in crisis situations at various spatial as well as temporal scales.

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“…Agrarian change opens up questions of material power and control over the environment that contrast with the questions of risk, vulnerability, and uncertainty that resilience thinking examines through coupled social-ecological systems. Although resilience concepts are useful in identifying how actors such as fish farmers are subject to wider socio-political structures and environmental processes, these concepts are at risk of depoliticizing processes of change, for example, by neglecting the fundamentally political and cultural construction of economies, by constructing agency only in terms of a capacity to adapt rather than to resist (Evans and Reid 2013), or by reducing the political to the "policing" of adaptation and thereby diverting questions away from power and justice (Welsh 2013). …”

Section: Agrarian Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Making social sense of aquaculture transitions

Bush¹,

Marschke²

2014

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Resilience deals explicitly with change and provides a middle ground between the social and the environmental sciences. However, a growing critique by social scientists questions the ability of resilience thinking to adequately examine the social dimensions of change. The question that emerges is how social scientists should engage with resilience. We addressed this question by comparing resilience with agrarian change and transitions theory, through the backdrop of the fastest growing global food sector, aquaculture. Our analysis showed that each theoretical perspective provides fundamentally different insights into social and environmental transition inherent in the aquaculture sector. Although resilience thinking is best suited to assessing the ecological aspects of production, its systems ontology limits the inclusion of dynamic social relations or innovation. In contrast, agrarian transition enables a more meaningful understanding of how social relations are reconfigured as agrarian society shifts toward more capitalist modes of production, and transitions theory provides insights into social process of innovation. Given the epistemological differences between these theoretical approaches, we argue against attempts that reify systemic thinking by naturalizing social theories and concepts into resilience thinking. Instead, we argue that social theories such as agrarian change and transition theory should be seen as complimentary and that integration should focus on bridging results and insights. Doing so enables a more robust assessment of the social aspects of social-ecological transitions in the aquaculture sector and beyond.

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Dangerously exposed: the life and death of the resilient subject

Cited by 206 publications

References 0 publications

Opening and Closing the Future: Climate Change, Adaptation, and Scenario Planning

Opening and Closing the Future: Climate Change, Adaptation, and Scenario Planning

Bridging the Macro and the Micro by Considering the Meso: Reflections on the Fractal Nature of Resilience

Making social sense of aquaculture transitions

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